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Wolffian Philosophy As Rhetoric in an Essay on the Beauty of the Human Body (1746) by E.A

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Wolffian Philosophy As Rhetoric in an Essay on the Beauty of the Human Body (1746) by E.A Ilya G. Guryanov WOLFFIAN PHILOSOPHY AS RHETORIC IN AN ESSAY ON THE BEAUTY OF THE HUMAN BODY (1746) BY E.A. NICOLAI BASIC RESEARCH PROGRAM WORKING PAPERS SERIES: HUMANITIES WP BRP 160/HUM/2017 This Working Paper is an output of a research project implemented at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE). Any opinions or claims contained in this Working Paper do not necessarily reflect the views of HSE Ilya G. Guryanov1 WOLFFIAN PHILOSOPHY AS RHETORIC IN AN ESSAY ON THE BEAUTY OF THE HUMAN BODY (1746) BY E.A. NICOLAI2 The movement of the so-called philosophiсal physicians was formed at the Prussian University of Halle in the middle of the 18th century as a medico-philosophical approach outside of the structure of university genres both in medicine and in philosophy. Being professional physicians, they read metaphysical texts relating to the status of body, to the living or to the relationship between soul and body and introduce the elements of new philosophical discourses such as Wolffianism into the field of medical theory outside of academic discourse. In this context, the objective of the paper is to identify and describe the argumentative features of E. A. Nicolai’s ‘An essay on the beauty of the human body’. Nikolai builds his reasoning more geometrico, referring directly to the works of Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten. However, Nicolai’s use of Wolffian terminology and form of reasoning is systematically ambiguous; for instance, he comes to anthropological conclusions which seem quite consistent with a theory of physical influx totally denied by Wolff discussing the soul-body problem. Moreover, the style of many passages of ‘An essay on the beauty of the human body’, saturated with philosophical terminology, is obviously ironic. Departing from Nikolai’s medico- philosophical approach, the paper lead to a reflection on the configuration of the disciplinary textual spaces and on the borders of academic medicine in the social dimension of the 18th century. Keywords: Philosophical physicians, Christian Wolff, Early Modern medicine, University of Halle, more geometrico, physical influx, anthropology and aesthetics. JEL Classification: Z. 1 National Research University Higher School of Economics. Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI). Research Assistant; E-mail: [email protected] 2 The research was conducted within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported within the framework of a subsidy granted to the HSE by the Government of the Russian Federation for the implementation of the Global Competitiveness Program. The interaction of philosophy and medicine, since the establishment of the relevant faculties in the first European universities, has never completely ceased but its various forms have changed dramatically. In the second part of seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, a new impetus for the mutual interest of these fields of knowledge was given by Cartesian philosophy, in which the human body is approached primarily within the framework of metaphysics in connection with the question of the interaction of substances. Although a whole series of medical and physiological postulates of Descartes must have looked archaic even to seventeenth-century physicians, the spread of the mechanistic approach to natural science made this new philosophy an attractive subject of study also for them. Since within the framework of the Cartesian system the difference between the living and the lifeless is nearly absent, physiology should be simply included in the field of physics, considering the human body by analogy with a mechanism. Formally, recognition of the mechanistic approach to natural science would have deprived medicine of its subject and its theory but the continuity of the discipline was maintained institutionally due to curricula of medical faculties at the universities. By the middle of the 18th century, various ways of solving the problem of psychophysical dualism as well as understanding the heritage of Descartes as a whole led to the formation of some new philosophical currents, one of which, called Wolffianism, is associated with the works of Christian Wolff (1679–1754). The intellectual environment that developed at the University of Halle in the first half of the eighteenth century is perhaps the most illuminating example of the interaction of philosophers and physicians.3 At approximately the same time, the 3 In recent decades, specialized works have gradually come to stress the importance of the University of Halle in the history of science and medicine of the eighteenth century, so the book series “Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung” was established by Walter de Gruyter Publishing House. On “philosophical physicians” at the University of Halle, see especially: Košenina A. Ernst Platners Anthropologie und Philosophie: der “philosophische Arzt“ und seine Wirkung auf Johann Karl Wezel und Jean Paul. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989; Heinz J. Wissen vom Menschen und Erzählen vom Einzelfall. Untersuchungen zum anthropologischen Roman der Spätaufklärung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996; “Vernünftige Ärzte”. Hallesche Psychomediziner und die Anfänge der Anthropologie in der deutschsprachigen Frühaufklärung / Hg. C. Zelle. Tübingen: Walter de Gruyter, 2001; Van Hoorn T. Dem Leibe abgelesen: Georg Forster im Kontext der physischen Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. 3 most prominent representatives of the main opposing systems, explaining the interaction of mental and physical phenomena, and the authors of the most influential medical theories of that epoch worked there. Apart from Christian Wolff, who taught there from 1706 to 1723 and from 1740 to 1754, Friedrich Hoffmann also gave lectures from 1695 to 1708 and from 1712 to 1742 and Georg Ernst Stahl from 1694 to 1715. Wolff and his disciples such as Alexander Baumgarten and Georg Friedrich Mayer advocated the metaphysical theory of pre- established harmony, grappling with the soul-body problem; Hoffmann, alongside his famous Dutch colleague Herman Boerhaave, was an adherent of the Cartesian mechanistic tradition in medicine; Stahl was the founder of medical animism. Thanks to their efforts and the teaching activities of their students and disciples in the 1740s, a circle of “philosophical physicians” was formed at the medical faculty of the University of Halle. Their significance within the framework of the larger narrative of the historical formation of philosophical anthropology or the history of medicine in modern times usually comes down to the fact that their approach to “human nature” outlined the middle path between mechanicism and animism, which became the so-called “vitalism”. However, I argue that the views of “philosophical physicians” were formed under the influence of a complex system of intellectual currents and social expectations from the medical discourse of the eighteenth century. Since the university medical curriculum remained conservative in the period considered, the introduction of elements of new philosophical discourses into the field of medical knowledge occurred outside of academic discourse. In order to define the concept of philosophical physician (philosophischer Arzt)4 used in German studies since 1970s (in the researches by H.-J. Schings, A. Košenina, J. Heinz, C. Zelle, T. van Hoorn), my paper examines 4 The term philosophischer Arzt is also interpreted as “physician-philosopher” and “philosophical doctor” which seems more ambiguous in the context of the epoch. We follow the English terminology as approved by Carsten Zelle, see: Zelle C. Experiment, Observation, Self-observation. Empiricism and the ‘Reasonable Physicians’ of the Early Enlightenment // Medical Empirism and Philosophy of Human Nature in the 17th and 18th Century / Eds. C. Crignon, C. Zelle, N. Allocca. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014. P. 131–148. 4 ‘An essay on the beauty of the human body’ of Ernst Anton Nicolai (1722–1802), which was published in 17465. In the research, the lists of persons who are classified as “philosophical physicians” vary. The German phrase “philosophische Arzt” was coined by Melchior Adam Weikard who used it as the title of his treatise, which gained great popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century. The work was first published in four volumes in 1775–1777 and had a significant impact on his future. The Russian Empress Catherine II liked the treatise, so Weikard was offered the position of court physician in St. Petersburg, where he moved in 1784. The most famous figure among “philosophical physician” is Ernst Platner (1744–1818). He was a professor of Philosophy and Medicine at the University of Leipzig, with which his entire academic career was associated from 1762. Platner’s renown is associated with his work ‘Philosophical aphorisms with some principles for a history of philosophy’, first published in 1776 and repeatedly reprinted throughout the eighteenth century (1776, 1782; 1784; 1793, 1800). Many contemporaries of this philosopher and physician used it to teach philosophical disciplines (history of philosophy, metaphysics, natural philosophy) and references to this work are found in the heritage of Kant, Reingold, and Fichte, who are canonical figures in the history of philosophy. Another medical and philosophical work by Platner ‘Anthropology for Physicians and Philosophers’ (Anthropologie für
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